Michigan’s Farewell Republic returns to The Black Cat tonight for what has become a holiday tradition for the band. Unfortunately, so have blizzards as intense as their tunes, but they’ve made their way to New York, Boston, and now DC over the past few days to deliver their brand of cinematic punk psychadelia. I caught up with singer/guitarist Sivan last week to discuss his DC roots, touring, and of course Ben’s Chili Bowl.
BYT: So, your 3rd annual holiday show at the Black Cat – talk a little about your relationship with the club and how it’s developed over the last few years. Is it important for you to play there?
FR: A couple years ago, when we played for the first time, we had just started booking shows around Ann Arbor in September and decided we wanted to book a tour on the east coast right after, during our winter break, so we could play for our friends from home. Our drummer Bobby is from Boston, Bassist Ryan is from Philly, and myself from DC, so we linked up with a friend of ours band, Marfa, and hooked it up. They played with us last year and it was packed again but they couldn’t do it this year. We’ve got Sinta who played with us the last two times we played in DC at The Black Cat and Velvet Lounge. I think it’s gonna be a really fun show again. I always tried to play the Cat back with my high school band and we could never get a show but they’ve been cool to us so far, it’s been a really great place to play, and they just treat you really well. A lot of venues can be really rude, especially as an unknown band. It’s my favorite place to play in the country so far.
BYT: Growing up in DC what, if any, local bands influenced you and your writing?
FR: The first show I ever saw in a club was Q And Not You when I was 15 at The Black Cat. That show really opened up, sort of, a new world for me. Up to that point I had only really listened to a lot of classic rock and more mainstream stuff. All my friends in high school were super into Q And Not You so I decided to tag along for a show and it was just a great experience, showed me a whole different world of music. That show coincided with me getting into more indie rock stuff, art-rock and what not, and led me to explore other genres of music. I started listening to a lot of jazz and ended up going to music school. It just really opened a lot of doors for me. I’d say our music doesn’t sound at all like classic DC post-punk or punk-rock, but just the fact that I started listening to the Dischord bands like Fugazi, bands like Dismemberment Plan, all these good DC bands, it just instilled in me the belief that you can be creative and do your own thing and hopefully someone will appreciate it. These bands did it on their own and didn’t wait for other people to help them out, they did everything themselves, and since we started the band our mentality has been that mentality. I wouldn’t say our music sounds like punk-rock but the whole DC punk history was influential to me from a creative standpoint. I’m gonna do what I wanna do musically and not worry about what other people are gonna think.
BYT: As far as touring between NY, Boston, or DC; how different is that experience than when you’re playing for college kids in Ann Arbor? Do you have a built in audience there?
FR: When we play in Ann Arbor we have about one to two-hundred people there. It’s not our favorite place to play, and we’ve definitely enjoyed the other cities more. NY has been hit or miss, we’ve had a couple good shows but then some not-so-good shows. Boston’s been great. Basically we feel like people on the east coast get our music a little more than people at our shows in the midwest, and the response has always been so positive here, which is why we try to do it so often.
BYT: You guys are playing Detroit now too right?
FR: Yea we play as often as we play Ann Arbor. Our last even was our biggest Detroit show when we opened at the Crofoot Ballroom which is a 930 Club size ballroom. Detroit’s fun, I like playing it better than Ann Arbor.
BYT: You’re all full time students but still making the effort to go on small tours. It seems like a lot of bands in that situation don’t have the time or focus to engage clubs and media outlets in other cities and tour. It’s obviously important to you; how has it benefited you over the last 3 years?
FR: Our goal from the start has never to be just a big local band. While we play a lot locally, and we get good shows locally, our goal has always been to establish ourselves regionally and put ourselves in the position when we graduate to be as much a known or legit band as possible. Whether that’s involved us recording our first EP in New York with Gus Oberg (The Strokes, Willie Nelson, Albert Hammond, Jr.) or spending all of our money to tour as much as we can, we really feel like that’s put us in a position where when we graduate we can be a full time band.
BYT: It’s not that far away before you all graduate; what do you see for yourself in the spring/summer of 2010 as far as recording or moving to a bigger city?
FR: The next step is touring nationally and recording our first full-length album. Hopefully by then we’ll have some sort of representation, whether that’s a booking agent, a label, or a manager. If we don’t, we’re just gonna keep operating like we are now and book a national tour and record a full length on our own. Someone will pick it up or we’ll just release it ourselves. We’ve existed thus far outside of the framework of the industry so while we’d hope to get some sort of backing financially, or help with promotion, if we don’t we’re just going to keep moving forward. After the summer we’re going to move to Brooklyn and be a cliché.
BYT: You mentioned putting out your own albums, and your first EP was pay-what-you-can while this EP never was for sale; you were just giving it away at shows or for free download. That’s been more common in the last year, and it’s easier for the Radioheads of the world, but the benefits are different for a huge band and a new band. Why has this been right for you?
FR: Our first EP had been out since September of 2008 and we’d spent a ton of money, by our standards, recording the EP. We were selling some at the shows but we had so many just sitting in boxes we said screw it, we’ll just let people pay whatever they wanted and we started to make a lot more money that way. With the new EP, we recorded it for free at the studio at U. of Michigan and, as a result of that, legally we can’t sell it but that was our intention from the start – to record there and release it for free. We spent about 40 hours in the studio just doing all night sessions last April and we recorded these three tracks. We got to use all the resources of being in the music school, with amazing horn and string players, and we had our friend Mike Coffman record and mix it. We had Fred Kevorkian in New York, who’s mastered a lot of albums I really loved, and worked with tons of great artists from Ryan Adams to The National to The White Stripes… I just went up to New York and got it mastered with him which was really cool. With our first EP, we had it professionally printed, but with this one we just did it all DIY, burned about 800 copies and have given out almost all of them. On our website you can download it for free and we’re just trying to get them to as many people as possible, have blogs post it, and just get our music into as many people’s hands as possible. At this point, any incremental amount of money we’d make releasing an EP commercially wouldn’t outweigh the benefit of just getting onto people’s iTunes.
BYT: Some of the recent press you’ve gotten have discussed the theatricality of the music. The songs don’t necessarily stay in one place, so while you move around a central theme the structure is pretty dynamic. Is this something you’re cognizant of when you sit down to write, more orchestral arrangements instead of shorter pop songs?
FR: A lot of people, some of the press, have talked about how we don’t follow traditional song structure but, for us when we write, there’s never a discussion that we have to be inside of this box or that box. Whether we have a 2 minute pop song or an epic 13 minute rock song, it’s never about trying to make a song something it isn’t. We just go where the song naturally takes us. Our intention as a band has always been to have some sort of theatricality but never in a cheesy way. A lot of times when we’re working on our music we think of it very visually, and we try to make a section capture that vision, feeling, or emotion. We’ve never focused on “we need to do a bridge here because it’s supposed to have a bridge” or “this song needs to be longer, this one shorter.”
BYT: When you come back to DC with your band, do you show them any of the city, any favorite spots?
FR: I think after our first DC show we went to Steak and Egg, I had to show them some classic middle of the night DC junk food. We’ve gone to Pines of Rome up in Bethesda, it’s the best pizza in the DC area in my opinion. Definitely better than waiting for hours at Two Amys for a table. Usually we don’t have time to see the city, just the late night eating spots. I tried to take them to Ben’s Chili Bowl after our first show but it was Sunday and it was closed. The pre-show ritual for us in high school was to go to Ben’s before shows at The Black Cat or 930 Club.
Want more: check them out live tonight at the Black Cat
